Now, the china I did use. But I was nervous, doing it. Something could break. And you know what? Nothing ever broke. Nothing. And what if it had?
Long as I’m doing embarrassing confessions, I want to tell you about a certain cake stand I have. It is green and has a floral imprint pattern and I used it for cake when company came.
I used to get right nervous when company came, and I never could overcome that demon. I would fuss about everything, it like to drove Terrence out of the house every time we were having people over for dinner. I wouldn’t let him help, you see. I would say JUST LET ME DO IT! mean as a snapping turtle. So he’d maybe run some errands or go out on the porch and I’d fuss and fuss. And I’d put the cake I made on the stand and sometimes I even lined flowers around the edge and still it didn’t make me happy because I worried were the flowers okay. I tell you, it was awful, for years I was that way! Most of my life I was that way! I wanted to invite my dear friends over, and I would visualize us all around the table, talking and laughing and everyone enjoying their food. But when the day came it all seemed like too much work for me, my blood felt like sludge in my veins, and I would wish I could go away and send in my double to take the reins. She could take the reins and I could set out on the porch and listen to the birds sing. The reason I am telling you this is to say if you are like this you’d best try to stop now while you are still young. Don’t say,Oh, I wonder if they will say something bad if I sprinkle a bit of sugar on the sliced tomatoes. You just go ahead and sprinkle the sugar. It’s your house. They’ve come for dinner. Enjoy them. And enjoy yourself. You might could use that cake stand. It does set things off. And there wasn’t a one didn’t remark on how pretty the flowers looked when I did up the cake that way.
Honestly. The years we spend worrying about not much. It’s truly years. Decades! I wonder why when we get to the end, we so often pull all the years we’ve lived through up close for a look-see and then like to smack our foreheads. The saving grace is all the things we do right. Taking a hand needs holding. Offering an apology when one is sorely needed. Stopping to watch or listen or be steeped in gratitude, oh you know how that can happen, I once watched a toddler go in and out of a playground fountain with her little pink swimming suit on, ruffles at the butt. And her diaper hanging low. And she was a little afraid but mostly exhilarated. I had to sit on the bench and watch a while. And all the way home, I felt like watching that child had let me build a little chapel inside myself, and I’d watched that little girl like she was a living prayer. Maybe she was.
Well, I’m fixing to make dinner and I guess I’ll have me some hard-boiled eggs. Which reminds me of something else I want to tell you about.
Flo has always loved that her neighborhood is near the little branch library. It’s no more than a five-minute walk from Flo’s house, and she decides she’ll go there today to ask some questions of the librarian that might help with Teresa.
She puts on a black dress with blue flowers, one of her favorites, never mind the fraying on the edge of one side of the belt. She’ll bring a cardigan for when she goes into the library; it might be cold in there. Seems like people think they ought to roast you to death in the winter and freeze you to death in the summer.
She walks down her front steps and turns right and for a few moments she forgets about everything but the task at hand. And look how well she’s walking, not out of breath, a steady pace. If a stranger passed, he wouldn’t know a thing other than she was an old lady out for a walk. She could go into a dimestore and buy something, she could go to a movie, she could order a cup of soup at a diner. She could still do those things. But today she is going to the library.
Outside of Mildred Curtis’s house, Flo sees the screen door opening and here Mildred comes down her porch steps. Mildred is someone whom Flo probably should have been friends with, but never was—maybe the age difference; Mildred is a good ten years younger. But Mildred is also a former actress who lived in New York City when she was young, and that always made Flo feel nervous around her. Still, Mildred’s voice gentled you down, she had a calm and kind way of speaking. Her eyes held a great curiosity, too, and it seemedlike whatever you were telling her was made more interesting just because of the way she stared so intently at you while you were telling the story. It made you want to add details—Mildred was in no hurry, that’s the way she always was.
Mildred waves at Flo, holds up a finger, and comes over to her. Even in her eighties, Mildred is still so attractive, like a woman in a painting with her pretty skin and clear blue eyes, and she’s kept her hair the original light brown color. No extra weight on her, either; Flo guesses she might be one of those who drives around with a yoga mat in the backseat of her car.
“I haven’t seen you for the longest time,” Mildred says. “It seems like it’s harder than ever these days for people to get together. But I’m so happy to run into you, because I’m dying to tell someone about something that happened.”
“Really! Well, invite me up onto your porch and tell me.”
“Actually, I’d love to have you come inside. I just pulled a gingerbread out of the oven. Would you like some gingerbread with lemon sauce?”
One of Flo’s favorite desserts, but she’s particular about it. “Well, I’ll tell you true. I love gingerbread, but only if it’s got pepper in it. Do you put pepper in yours?”
Mildred puts her hand on her hip. “Do I put pepper in gingerbread? Of course I do!”
Flo follows Mildred into her bright yellow kitchen and sits at the Formica table. “Coffee?” Mildred asks, and Flo says that would be lovely.
The women enjoy a few bites of gingerbread—Flo has to admit it’s wonderful—and then she asks Mildred, “So what happened?”
“Well. I just received acheckin the mail. Because I am going to be published in a magazine!” Mildred sits back in her chair, her chin raised. “You know Lake McAllister, right?”
Flo knows it well, though it has been a long time since she’s been there. It is less than a mile way, and it was always pleasant walking around that lake in the summer—wouldn’t take but half an hour to circle the whole thing—and there were the willow trees at the edge dipping their leaves in the water and the ducks resting in the cool shade beneath the branches. Swans came, too, and one afternoon when Flo had taken little five-year-old Ruthie for a walk there, a swan had rushed out of the water and bit Ruthie’s ankle. Ruthie hollered bloody murder and nothing would do but that her mother put a huge bandage on her when she got home when she hardly needed it, it was just a little red mark.
“Sure, I know that lake,” Flo says. “Pretty over there.”
“Do you remember that in the middle of the lake there are two islands, Twin Islands, they’re called? They’re pretty close together, a channel in between.”
“Yes. Folks like to swim back and forth between them.”
“Well,” Mildred says, “this last winter I ice skated around those islands.”
Flo looks at her. Blinks.
“Youice skatedaround them?”
“Yes, I did. And it was so special I wrote about it, and then I thought what I wrote was pretty good so I sent it toRetireemagazine, and they’re going to publish it. And they paid me three hundred dollars! I just got the check today.”
“That’s wonderful!” Flo says, but she is thinking Mildred is plum crazy, ice skating at her age.
“I didn’t fall down once,” Mildred says, as though reading Flo’s mind. “The lake had frozen and then it rained, and it froze again, smooth as glass—the surface was like a mirror. I’d driven past it earlier and then that night I was lying in my bed and I thought, I have to go and skate on it. I have to. I got my skates from the basement storeroom and off to the lake I went. Not a soul was there—well, itwasone in the morning. But it was so quiet, and the stars so piercingly clear. I sat down on a bench and laced up my skates and then I made my way onto the ice. It was just perfect, like they make it for the hockey players. I skated out to the islands and circled them twice and then I came back to the shoreline and took off my skates and walked home. I felt like I was buzzing, almost like I had wings inside me going at a furious rate.” She looks over at Flo and laughs. “Don’t look so shocked! It was fine! I still have strong ankles and I was always a very good skater when I was young. I thought, When will it ever happen again that the ice will be like that? In my lifetime, I mean.”
“How old are you, now?”
“Eighty-two, but you know what? When I was out there, I simply forgot my age. The only thing in my mind was the urge to skate again, under perfect conditions no less, and it seemed like everything was in harmony with me—the night sky and the ragged little dark clouds, theskritch skritchsound of my blades and fine spray of ice, the curlicue tracks I left behind like I was writing a love letter to the lake. I just had to do it! And it will be one of those memories that feels encased; we don’t get so very many like that.”
